Since our reservations were so early, I didn't have much time to get Raelynn ready (who is now in the phase of removing her clothes so I have to dress her, then dress her again every time she undresses herself) or myself before Jeremy came home and announced it was time to go. So of course, it wasn't until this morning that I discovered the return of the luo bo in my kitchen. If you didn't read my recent post complaining about the luo bo, a Chinese radish, go here. Then I can tell you all about the latest luo bo findings.
They don't celebrate Thanksgiving here in China. But my school is kind enough to give us a day off to celebrate. Instead of a 4-day weekend though, we get a 3-day weekend. Hey, I won't look a gift horse in the mouth! Of course, Jeremy had to work. I told him I was going to scrub this house from top to bottom. It was nasty. It almost seems like a giant waste of time, what with MIL constantly coming over to fuck it up and make it smell like one giant fart. Even the diaper disposal smells better than some of the things she cooks. In any event, cleaning was necessary. My husband then tells me not to worry about cleaning today. We'll clean together tomorrow. We've been married just over 2 years now, and I'm willing to bet other married women will agree with me when I say the only thing he'll say about cleaning when tomorrow comes is that we should clean tomorrow. Jeremy's definition of "tomorrow" is different than mine. Earlier this week when I was pissed off at MIL about staining that shirt she had no business putting Raelynn into, I'd tried to get the stains out. I made them less noticeable but they are still there. My husband told me that he would scrub it by hand again and get the stains out "tomorrow." And several days have passed now where "tomorrow" has been used to describe when this activity will take place. But that's another story.
In the interest of saving my Saturday plans of having my husband take me to buy new boots for winter, I went ahead and cleaned the house. Truth be told, I couldn't stand for it to be so messy. Raelynn's toys were all over the place, making our small living room look like her toy box blew up. MIL only pretends to clean so it was blatantly obvious to me that our home needed a good, thorough cleaning. One thing that needed cleaning was our dish drying rack. Before I could even clean up our breakfast dishes, I had to wash that. As I put the dishes away, I found this hiding under a bowl:
It's a thick slice of luo bo! WHY with the fucking luo bo again? Right by my favorite mug with the yak on it too! Urgh! For just a few days, all signs of luo bo were regulated to the refrigerator vegetable drawer, where it should be. Now this shit again. Even if luo bo was my favorite thing ever, I would not be eating it after finding it here. I don't know if you can see the pink tray that is part of this drying rack very well, but it has remnants of flour on it from MIL making her dumplings and making a mega-mess in the process which she shirks all responsibilities for cleaning up.
After getting my kitchen back to the way I like it, I began the process of cleaning the rest of the house. I think I've mentioned before that things get so dusty in China. You could dust the counters and shelves in the morning and in the afternoon, there will be a ton of dust on there, as though you never cleaned a day in your life. I try to dust at least once a week. If I didn't work, I would dust hourly. I ran a few loads of laundry. I dusted. I swept. And that is when I found this lovely, shriveled thing under the kitchen table, in the prime zone MIL brags about keeping clean for us with her make-believe sweeping followed by a round of her pushing the mop that she has submerged into slightly clean water with no cleaning agent a few half-assed times across the floor. Raelynn does a better job with the fucking wet wipes when you give her some to play with!
So, what is this thing, you ask? Why, it's a dried up luo bo slice of course! How the baby didn't find this disgusting thing before me is a mystery to me. I moved it to this wood chair to get a better photo of it because it wasn't coming out very good in it's original spot under our table. I'm ashamed it was on my floor long enough to turn into this. Then again, I'm working and I spend my evenings playing with my daughter and making dinner for our family, followed by bathing my daughter and putting her to sleep (which is extremely difficult lately because she's got more teeth coming in). At night, I feel I've earned my fucking right to play Words With Friends or Song Pop or just catch up on emails and Facebook comments. Thankfully, Raelynn didn't try to eat this, another reason to be grateful during this Thanksgiving holiday weekend!
The house was really coming along nicely. Raelynn became preoccupied with the Nick Jr. cartoons so I really hustled, trying to get it all done before she got underfoot again. I got to her room and noticed she'd shoved a ton of toys into her toy stroller. As I cleaned it out, I found something else:
Dear God! What is in there with the baby doll?!? Is that a...
FUCKING PLASTIC BAG?!?
That stupid, moronic imbecile! All it would take would be for her to use the bathroom or more likely, for her to gab on our phone to her dolt-rod friends and not notice Raelynn slip this over her head. Maybe MIL should wear it on her own head. It would certainly be an improvement.
Until I can figure out how to bag MIL, I at least have an ideal solution for how to deal with new ugly clothes for the baby from her. It's my revenge for that shirt she fucked up the other day, not to mention the other clothes she has ruined by forgetting to use a bib (which just goes to show you what a total dumbwad she is when I leave bibs sitting on the table for her to use, right in front of the high chair). I'm taking a page out of the senile, ugly old troll handbook here. When she gives us something for the baby to wear, I'll accidentally on-purpose spill oily, greasy food and soy sauce all over it and then not wash it. And it will STAIN. Then she'll see how it fucking feels when clothes that should last the baby for another year are fucked up by sloth behavior like hers. Yes, it will absolutely fucking priceless.